Ys Memoire: Revelations in Celceta just got a new Duren gameplay trailer

XSEED Games has released a new gameplay teaser for Ys Memoire: Revelations in Celceta. The short video focuses on the martial arts skills of party member Duren ahead of the game's April 28 launch on Nintendo Switch.

Look, it is a very slow news day. Ys is my all-time favorite series. I am seizing this opportunity to talk about Nihon Falcom's long-running action RPG franchise, and no one here can stop me.

The 29-second clip is a straightforward combat demonstration. It opens with a quick look at the skill management menu, showing Duren at level 33 with equippable moves like Jaw Breaker and Sliding Strike.

From there, the video cuts to gameplay. Duren is an information broker and thief who partners with the amnesiac protagonist Adol Christin early in the story. In combat, he relies on hand-to-hand martial arts. We see him launch enemies upward in a forest environment using the Swallow Kick.

The teaser also shows off the game's "Skill Finish" system inside a dungeon setting. Duren executes a Dragon Kick to trigger an "Excellent Kill" screen. The video wraps up with the Phoenix Kick, a high-impact area-of-effect attack that creates a massive blue energy burst.

A Vita original comes to Switch

The slightly altered title hides a familiar game. This is a remaster of Ys: Memories of Celceta. Falcom originally developed the game for the PlayStation Vita in 2012. It was the studio's official attempt to tell the story of Ys IV. The fourth entry in the series had previously been outsourced to multiple third-party developers in the 1990s. This resulted in entirely different games depending on the console.

Hot take: I love Celceta. But Dawn Of Ys on PC Engine is my Ys IV.

Celceta eventually made its way to Windows PC in 2018 and PlayStation 4 in 2020. This new Switch release is based on those later versions but adds a few specific upgrades under the "Memoire" branding.

The new upgrades

The Switch remaster has high-definition textures and runs at 60 frames per second. The biggest addition is the audio. Falcom recorded a newly arranged version of the entire soundtrack. You can toggle between this new arrangement and the original Vita music in the settings menu.

This release is a good excuse to look back at how the series evolved. Celceta refined the multi-character party system that Falcom first introduced in Ys Seven on the PlayStation Portable. The mechanics established here laid the direct groundwork for the combat in later entries like Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana. The game forces you to constantly swap between characters to exploit enemy weaknesses based on attack types. Strike attacks break armored foes, while slash attacks handle soft enemies. Duren is your primary strike attacker early on.

The Switch version is already available in Japan, and the localized release arrives on April 28. Physical collectors can also grab a "Day One" edition that includes a cloth map, a two-disc soundtrack, art cards, and a diorama set. The game is a solid historical artifact. Players who started with recent entries like Ys VIII or Ys X will immediately recognize the foundation of those modern combat mechanics here.